Skip to main content
Main

Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mix with cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, peppers, seasoned with mustard, turmeric, sugar, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Brine the vegetables

  1. Combine cucumbers, green tomatoes, onions, cauliflower, and green peppers in a bowl.

  2. Make a brine with 4 quarts of water and 1 pint of coarse sea salt.

  3. Pour the brine over the vegetables and soak for 24 hours.

  4. Heat the mixture just enough to scald it.

  5. Drain the mixture in a colander.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, ground mustard, and turmeric with enough cold vinegar to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add sugar and enough vinegar to make a total of 2 quarts.

  3. Boil the mixture until thick and smooth, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the drained vegetables to the mixture.

  5. Cook until heated throughout.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Mustard + turmerictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,279 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the mustard sauce so it becomes smooth and thick when boiled.
Ground mustard
Gives the sauce its sharp mustard flavor and yellow-brown color.
Turmeric
Adds a bright yellow color and a warm, earthy flavor to the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the pickles and gives them their tang.

The step that matters

Boil the mustard sauce until thick and smooth. Flour thickens only when it is fully heated in liquid, and stirring constantly keeps it from scorching or forming lumps. Undercooked flour leaves a raw taste and a thin sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, flour, mustard, turmeric):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, cauliflower, pepper, flour, mustard, turmeric. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More mustard pickles recipes

Mixed 7 See all 151 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipes